


Follow the Lady

by themillersdaughtersmistress



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Romance, Sexual Content, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-16
Updated: 2014-09-16
Packaged: 2018-02-17 11:25:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 11,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2307941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themillersdaughtersmistress/pseuds/themillersdaughtersmistress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zelena is certain her old mentor convinced her long lost sister to do something terrible when Zelena refused, but has no idea where either of them are. She seeks out the help of Tamara, known only as 'Ace' in the Land Without Color, to combine magic and science to find her. Turns out, finding Zelena's sister was the easy part.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Over the River and Through the Woods; Ace Up Your Sleeve

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alinaandalion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alinaandalion/gifts).



> Lovely betas: ohthesefeelingz and vaachaal
> 
> Thanks: all of the above, and most of my friend circle, for putting up with my muse being these two women since I dove into this fandom, and to my best friend in particular, who gave the inspiration for about half of this story's plot.
> 
> Cover art by the amazing alinaandalion here: http://archiveofourown.org/works/2299241

**Over the River and Through the Woods**

~*~

The air was thick with smoke—well, what you could see of the air between the thick sheets of rain. The streets for miles around were dark, people too tired from work or too intimidated by the spectacle not three miles from them to put on a candle. The spectacle itself was a towering and twisting eyesore of a house, every single window lit and every single opening blaring some sort of grating noise. People spilled out and poured back in, stumbling drunk and high off success and the romance of riches.

One figure, unnoticed by all but one, broke away from the crowd, stumbling then running outright down a back alley, a glowing, pulsing red thing just visible in the figure’s gloved hands. The one that spotted them quickly made excuses, and took off after the first person. A breathless chase commenced, shoes muddied from splashing in puddles riddled with waste and disease and clothes even worse than the shoes from being ripped on rusty metal protrusions from the rundown buildings they ran between. It ended, as all things tend to, when the second figure tackled the first to the ground.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” the first cried out in a heavy accent, gasping in pain as they stumbled to their feet. Their coat and hood and been completely ruined and mostly pulled off, revealing a dark skinned girl of no more than eighteen or nineteen. Her eyes welled with tears. “I just needed the money for—” ,hiccup, “—my family. I can return this if you want, it’s just a prop!”

“What?” the other person exclaimed, a girl as well, no older or younger than the first, with red hair and ghostly white skin. “I-I have no idea what… so you’re not Ace? The people over there said—”

“So you’re one of _His_ ,” the other girl cut her off, accent and tear choked voice completely gone. She calmly pulled a gun from somewhere in the insides of her dress and pointed in at the redhead.

She moved to pull the trigger, but stopped when the redhead collapsed into a ball and began sobbing outright. “Please, don’t! You’re my only hope! I c-can’t go to anyone else, and I s-swear I’m not whatever y-you’re accusing me of, please!”

She continued sobbing senselessly, and the other girl felt a flash of uncomfortable guilt. “Don’t cry,” she said awkwardly, patting the redhead’s shoulder. “It’s alright, I swear. I won’t hurt you, if you won’t hurt me.”

“Of course not!” the redhead burst out. “I just got here, and I’m certainly not _him_ , or whomever—or any of his minions!”

“Well, who are you, then? What do you want with Ace?”

“Z-Zelena,” the girl forced out through the huge gasping breaths she took trying to calm down. “If you know stories from Oz, then you might know me as the Wicked Witch, but I swear that was a terrible misunderstanding! And Ace, h-he was just in the books I read, the only one with magic and science on their side—and you got a heart out of a place guarded by magic and science, so I thought ‘that must be Ace!’” Ace guiltily shoved the glowing red into her dress, hiding the evidence of her desperation to find Frankenstein.

“Well, first off, I don’t go by Ace anymore, except in extreme cases.” It could be incredibly stupid to trust her real name to a stranger that seemed so emotionally unhinged, she reflected, but what else was new? “I’m Tamara.”

“S’pretty,” Zelena mumbled, smiling up at Tamara through watery lashes. “It would be nice to look for my sister with a pretty girl with a pretty name.”

“Sister?” Tamara asked, bewildered by yet another of the girl’s abrupt change of pace.

Zelena blinked, then sat up straighter. “Yes, that’s the rest! I don’t know what happened, really, but I think my sister was manipulated into casting a curse my former mentor was plotting—and he’s a conniving old man, he can’t be trusted!—and I think that she might be hurt or dead or worse, and I can’t find either of them, in any realm, and I can feel dark wards up whenever I try to find her using blood magic, and you’re my last hope! You can get through magic with your science, correct?”

The girl had huge eyes, annoyingly huge and filled with tears. Tamara weighed her vendetta against the plea, then the plea against those eyes. Then she sighed, kicking herself the entire time, she said, “Yes, of course. Where do we start?”

#

**Ace Up Your Sleeve**

**(Six Months Later)**

~*~

“…and it would be…just right…there—yes, that’s—shit!”

Tamara kicked the leg of the table, shaking it and the equipment on top of it so hard that her coffee mug fell off of it with a loud crash. The machines continued their useless beeping and whirring, telling her everything about anything but who they were trying to find.

Zelena jerked awake at the noise, staring blearily at the mess of porcelain and black liquid soaking into the carpet. “Something happen?” she asked her traveling companion, slurring the ‘g’ with sleep as she climbed to her feet and ambled towards the smaller woman.

“Nothing,” Tamara grunted, pushing the computer away from her. It slid, stopped only by the tangle of wires and boxes in the middle of the table. The wires themselves were attached to three globes at one end of the table and a black box steadily spitting out statistics, the paper they were printed on curling and falling to the floor.

“’S not nothing,” Zelena protested as she curled her long limbs to perch on the arm of the chair. “You never get mad.”

“Nothing more than what I’ve gotten for months,” she amended. “Your sister’s impossible to find. If what you say is true about the curse, then this town should act like a portal and show up on my machines like a portal would, but it won’t! Even seeing where your blood magic tracking tries to go, there’s nothing. It jumps around and moves and it once was in the center of the earth, Zee!” Tamara pulled her into her lap, stroking Zelena’s hair in absentminded frustration. “That never happens, not even with magic. It won’t work! I’ve tried everything I can think of.”

“And you’ll try everything you haven’t thought of,” Zelena said. “I know you. You like the challenge, and you’ll go through with it because of that, even if it had nothing to do with me.”

A screech interrupted whatever was going to be said after that, and Tamara’s scowl was as thunderous as Zelena’s smile was radiant.

“Walsh!” she exclaimed, hopping up and bounding across the room to throw the window open, letting in a furry beast of a winged monkey that was as tall and gangly as she was.

Tamara scowled, getting up to grab a towel, and began attempting to clean up the mess. Her scowl deepened as Zelena and Walsh had a conversation that was part screeching and part high-pitched babbling.

Zelena turned away from the conversation to pout at Tamara. “Don’t be rude, Tamara, say hi!”

“Hi, Walsh,” the other woman forced out through gritted teeth, then muttered under her breath, “you furry bastard.”

Walsh screeched, wings flaring full and menacing. “Tamara!” Zelena scolded.

“What?” the other woman demanded. “I don’t like him, and he doesn’t like me! That’s how that’s always been.”

“That could have something to do with the fact that you gave him wings.”

“You wanted me to save his scrawny ass!”

“I warned you to be careful of the fact that he was from Oz, and that your usual methods might not be the best!”

Tamara groaned, slouching her shoulders and stomping her feet over to Zelena. Walsh screeched as Tamara came closer. She flipped him off. “And we’ve had this argument twenty different times already,” she said as she wrapped her arms around the other woman. "What've you got for us now, Walsh?"

More screeching, and he held out a battered and torn folder that Tamara honestly couldn't figure out where in the masses of fur and feathers it had been hidden. Gingerly she took it, wrinkling her nose at the smell.

She glanced at the first page and then scoffed. “It’s a missing persons report from months ago! And a closed one at that!” She tossed it on the table. “Useless!”

“He wouldn’t have brought it if it was useless!” Zelena protested, picking the file up and brushing it off a bit. She flipped through it. “Ah hah! See, told you!” She waved the papers under Tamara’s nose, making the other woman scoff and shove her hand away. Undeterred, Zelena continued. “It was closed because the woman called in herself and got it called off. Her name’s Emma Swan.” She tacked the last bit on almost as an afterthought, even though it was anything but.

Tamara’s eyes snapped up, brows furrowed. “Like House Swan, in those books you made me read on Enchanted Forest royal families? Didn’t you say that the girl the Dark One was after was named Emma?”

“I know, I know, you’ll say it doesn’t prove anything,” Zelena said. “But—”

“It’s more than we’ve had in months,” Tamara finished for her, desperation overtaking any common sense she had left after working in such close quarters with magic for so long. “She fit the Savior’s profile?” At Zelena’s nod, she grinned. “Feel like taking a road trip to this Storybrooke, Maine?”

  
  



	2. Dealers and Downcards; Bluff; Big Bet Game

**Dealers and Downcards**

~*~

_Bzz-_

“Stop.”

_Bzzzz-_

“Stop!”

_BzzzzZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzz-_

“Rumple, stop, she doesn’t know!”

“And  _how_  would you know?” The Dark One turned to the corner where his love was standing, hunched, and shut off the machine in exasperation. He had to admit: Frankenstein, for all that he was a failure as far as reviving the dead went, had done fairly decent work on his new favorite torture device. “You do recall the part where she is as bad as I am when I was neck deep in Dark Magic in the Enchanted Forest?” He ignored the heavy breathing coming from the metal table and stalked over to his lover.

“I know,” Belle tried to reason with him. “But—”

“And now she is doing this-this town line business—it’s to spite me, for the curse not being,” he continued in a higher pitched voice as he waved his hands around and wiggled his fingers, “everything she ever wanted!” He whirled around and

Belle sighed, and backed down. “Makes sense,” she muttered, eyes flitting around the walls. “Maybe you should take a break, think of different ways to question her.”

He sighed, but nodded, kissing her on the forehead. “I’ll go down to the basement, and get us drinks.” He walked towards the stairs, but whirled around with a manic grin on his face. "I promise, Belle, once this is over, we will have everything. I will have crossed over to get Bae, and the town will be ours to rule as a family."

As soon as his footsteps faded, Belle rushed over to where Regina was strapped down, quickly undoing her bindings. The former queen’s hands flopped palm-up on the table.

Belle winced at the motion. “Well, at least you’re relaxed, if unconscious.”

“M’not…unconsc’s…” came from lips that barely moved, causing Belle to jump a foot in the air. 

“Well, hold this,” Belle said, pushing a purple crystal into Regina’s palm-up hand, making sure it was at least partially covered by her fingers. “I have the other—it’s time sensitive. Once I grab it, your…your guys come in.”

A breathless laugh. “And you’re…helping me? And betraying your True Love?”

“Rumple is…” She swallowed, her eyes shining. “Rumple has lost himself. Once he finds himself again, he’ll come find me.” It sounded like the worst lie Regina had ever heard. “And you, as much as I don’t like you, are helping Snow and Charming, who I owe a lot more to, even having never met them. Are you ready?” At Regina’s nod, she pulled out her own crystal, squeezing it tight in her hand. She could hear uneven steps as Rumple got closer to the door.

And then the walls caved in.

**Bluff**

~*~

When they came within view of the dead end of the road, Tamara swore. The two of them had been driving for hours, from Boston all the way to the backroads of Maine. Zelena had practically been high off of this world’s cheap candy, and after the second hour, Tamara had wanted nothing more than to shove her hyperactive girlfriend out of the speeding car. And now, her control was being tested once again by the wall of overgrown brush and trees that cut off the road in front of them.

“Why did you stop?” Zelena demanded.

“The giant-ass line of trees might have something to do with it,” Tamara snapped. “Does being from a world with magic make you half blind?”

“There’s no line of trees there,” Zelena pouted in confusion.

Tamara looked at her in exasperated disbelief. “No—?! There’s at least fifty trees all crammed into the narrow space where the road is supposed to be!”

“No, there isn’t.” Zelena was still pouting. “There’s—oh!” She grinned. “You can’t see it! You and your must-always-have-proof eyes can’t see the barrier because you don’t believe fully that it’s there!” Zelena nearly laughed herself straight out the open window. Tamara wondered why in the hell she’d fallen for such a nonsensical idiot. “It’s what’s been throwing me off this entire time! Now that we’re close enough I can feel the dark magic.” And with that, Zelena jumped out of the car and bounded over to the trees.

“Zel—!” Tamara cut herself off, following after the other woman and cursing her past self for going along with this insanity, for looking at the challenge of finding a common ground between the long unrelated forces of magic and science and not staying far, far away.

“See?” Zelena leaning and pushing her shoulder against air. The air gave and shimmered. “Even now, when I can feel it, it’s trying to tell me we should look for it in the Chesapeake Bay Tunnel!” A breathless laugh, and then she turned back to Tamara. “Come on, trust me, it’s here!”

Tamara sighed, walking back to the car and yanking her gun out of the glove compartment. It was incredibly old, originally her grandmother’s, and had been worked and modified so much, the only thing remaining the same was its look. It was one she trusted to give her an advantage over anything magical, disrupting every piece of magic she’d used it on. Walking back to where Zelena stood, her mind shouting louder and louder that Zelena was insane, she took aim.

Five bullets gleaming gold flew forward at shoulder height, then sunk themselves into nothingness just before the trees, bobbing up and down but going no further. A sixth sent purple-tinged-white cracks high into the air, reaching for the edge of the horizon and the underbelly of the clouds. A seventh. Eighth.

A tenth. Pieces of the barrier materialized and fell shattered out, fist-sized, from shoulder height all the way to the tops of the trees, falling like glass at Tamara’s feet.

A twelfth. The sound of the wind reached out, squeezing through the holes in the ward, clawing with high pitched eerie wails for anything within a five mile radius.

A thirteenth.

The barrier shattered, a giant hole opening up before them. Zelena cheered, throwing herself at Tamara in a full body hug.

“You did it!” she cried out, repeating it again and again.

Tamara gaped at what was in front of her. Where there had been trees was now a road, paved and wide and new, with a burned and blasted green sign clearly of this world standing proudly by its side with the words only barely visible.

_Welcome to Storybrooke._

 

#

**Big Bet Game**

~*~

A huge truck, battered and missing things completely in sections, stopped their car once they started seeing buildings. Despite the people in the back—young girl to old man, all aiming magical and mundane weapons at them—glaring at Zelena and Tamara, it was the man driving that hopped out and demanded they get out. Tamara’s jaw clenched as Zelena’s eyes widened, taking in the state of some of the buildings, barely scattered rubble in some cases.

“I said out!” the man yelled, drawing his sword. Zelena immediately obeyed, getting out and coming to the front of the car.

Tamara went slower, glaring back at the man. She slid out of the car, gliding her hand along the doorframe before grabbing it and slamming the car shut. “Yes, officer,” she said, smirking, leaning on the hood of the car. “Or Prince? Charming, to be specific.”

Zelena looked between the sword, the badge, and the tense set of Tamara’s shoulders, and stepped in front of her. “We’re looking for Queen Regina,” she told him, folding her arms in front of herself. “If she’s not here, we go, and you can shove your sword back where it belongs.” She said the last the same as one would say _‘shove it up your ass,’_ though the tone seemed to have been lost on Prince Charming. He reluctantly put his sword away.

“You’re not working for Rumpelstiltskin, then” he nodded to himself. “You would know if you were.”

“He has her?” Zelena yelped.

Charming nodded. “But we’re rescuing her right now.” Zelena nodded as if that made complete sense, but Tamara sneered.

“And why would Prince Charming be rescuing the Evil Queen?” she demanded. An elbow to the ribs was the result of using one of the titles given to Zelena’s family that the other woman had deemed off  limits. The elbow and the woman attached to it went ignored. “And why the hell would you trust two strangers enough to say?”

“We’re in a war,” he responded, “and we need all the help we can get. And she’s…helping.”

“Until she cancould weasel out of it,” came from the back of the truck, from a dwarf with a bushy beard.

Zelena bared her teeth at him, but Charming spoke before she could attack. “She’s not doing anything now, and not for a week since Gold captured her—Rumpelstiltskin.” He said the last to the two new guests to the torn apart town. “During the…curse, we had a different name.”

 _Great_ , thought Tamara.

“And you are rescuing her now?” Zelena made sure.

Charming nodded, frowning. “Since you came all this way for her, do you want to come back with us and wait for the team getting her to come back?”

“We don’t even know their names!” protested the dwarf.

“Tamara,” Tamara waved towards herself, then her taller lover, who was once again glaring at the dwarf. “Zelena. Good enough?”

“That’s excellent!” Charming was grinning at the both of them now, as if he hadn’t been threatening them with his sword not ten minutes ago. Tamara felt the beginnings of a headache coming on. “Let’s go! ”

 

 


	3. Pot Limit

**Pot Limit**

~*~

_She was in a room, wooden and plain. It wasn’t one she remembered from her childhood, nor her days as Mayor or Queen—perhaps she’d been in it once, following Charming around as he demanded she pull Snow White and Sheriff Swan from thin air?_

_She stood, the room lurching sickeningly as she stumbled on unsteady legs. She put her hands on her knees for balance, looked down, and realized she was wearing her old riding gear. Her braid, tied at the end with her younger self’s gaudy favorite bright blue bow, fell off her shoulder and into her line of sight when she tilted her head. She looked up._

_Her mother was in the room with her, in all her sparkling glory. Rumpelstiltskin stood beside her, in one of his cursed self’s suits. Both were looking at her from across the room as a scientist would their prized lab rat. She didn’t think; she turned and ran._

_The room extended to accommodate her, stretching outward just far enough to not get in her way as she stumbled away, away,_ away. _Not once did she look back, not wanting to face the demons of her past at all, and certainly not as her naive teenaged self._

_“Oh, no, dearie,” Rumple tsk-ed as he appeared in front of her in a cloud of blue smoke. “You should know better, by now. It’s useless to run from either of us.”_

_“She always was stubborn,” her mother said from behind her, sending chills racing up her spine. She turned to the right, not getting even two paces before she tripped over her own feet, falling hard on her elbow and hearing a sickening crack. She cried out, curling into a ball as the pain spiked up her arm._

_Tiny hands pushed at her until she rolled onto her back. A young boy, possibly only eight or nine, hovered over her with wires hanging from his chubby fingers. “Stay still, Mrs. Mayor,” he told her, eyes blank, and attached the ends to her temples. She screamed as the electricity consumed her._

_~*~_

“Absolutely not!”

“We need them back—and whether I like it or not, the Queen is the only one who can get—”

“You don’t need them back; you haven’t given me one reason why either Emma Swan or Snow White would be useful in a war against the Dark One and his allies. Neither of them have magic that’s powerful enough, and the Prince is leading just fine on his own— _Stop_.”

“One of the reasons she isn’t in a cell right now is because she agreed to help in any way needed. As soon as she wakes up, she works on getting them back.”

“She’s just been tortured for days!”

Regina opened her eyes to the sight of the Blue Fairy nose-to-throat with a fuming, gangly redhead that she’d never seen before, despite the shape of her face being vaguely familiar. She herself was in an unfamiliar bed in a room that, to her horror, she remembered being in Mary Margaret’s—Snow, _Snow’s_ —apartment.

“Your sister agreed to this, Witch,” the Blue Fairy snarled. “You of all people have no right to interfere.”

“I have every right,” the other woman protested. “I’m her sister!”

“No, you’re not,” Regina cut them both off with athat scratchy murmur, smirking at their shock. “I’m an only child. Who the hell are you?”

“Your magic is needed,” Blue ignored the question, talking over whatever the other said, earning a glare. “We’ve lost the entrance due to your rescue, but gained Main Street and the Well, so you can work on creating a portal there for—”

“She’s not working on anything! I’m Zelena,” Zelena told her, not at all put off by the start to their conversation.

“The Wicked Witch was just leaving,” Blue looked furious at Zelena’s protestation.

“I’m not Wicked! That was a misunderstanding!”

“The Good Witch, an ally and a friend, is dead because of you!”

There was no way Regina would have been able to accurately recount what happened next—a scream, a whirlwind, and the Blue Fairy was bodily tossed out of the room. It was silent for a solute minute before Regina snorted.

“Well, dear, murder might make your claims of being the sister of the Evil Queen more believable, but assaulting the most powerful magical being in the town might not have been the smartest move.”

“It’s not—” Zelena sighed. “This isn’t going how I pictured.”

“I never pictured having a little sister.”

“Older sister,” Zelena corrected. “You’re the baby sister.”

“Really?” Regina snorted. “That I don’t believe.”

“I tested it myself,” Zelena protested.

“And why,” Regina pushed herself up by her elbows, panting, “would you have reason to test it in the first place?”

“I was told,” Zelena reluctantly told her. “By the Dark One.” Regina hissed. “I didn’t know who he was when I met him. He made me the most powerful being in Oz, bar the other witches…he told me about family, that wasn’t my father…and then…”

“Then you killed the Good Witch,” Regina filled in for her. She’d heard about it; how could she not? It was an incredible feat of magic, draining all the magic out of a Witch of Oz fast enough to kill them outright. It should have been impossible.

“I didn’t kill her!” Zelena shouted, tears in her eyes. “It was…I was already connected to Glinda since my early days, before people called me Wicked. I was drained of magic from fighting, and Glinda latched on and w-wouldn’t let go…” To Regina’s horror, Zelena started actively sobbing. “I told her she would d-die if she…” She dissolved into tears, rocking back and forth on her feet. “W-Why didn’t she let go?”

“Who led the attack?” Regina cleared her throat then asked.

“Enemies of mine.” Zelena shrugged. “Rumpelstiltskin was paying them, of course.”

“Of course.”

“He wanted me to cast the curse he foisted on you, originally, using Glinda once he learned about our connection.”

“Of course.” Regina’s lips felt frozen, and her heart was somewhere around her stomach. “Did…did you know my mother?”

“No,” Zelena shook her head sadly. “I hated that about you when I first saw you.”

“Saw me?” Regina pulled at the loose strands in the—dear gods, it was _pink and orange_ —quilt covering her.

“It was one of the first spells I learned, and I made him show me after he told me about you.” Zelena sat down on the bed, then shortly collapsed beside her.

“And just what do you think you’re doing?” Regina’s tone was sharp, but there was no bite.

“Sleeping,” Zelena mumbled into a pillow. “If anyone comes in and asks, I’m guarding you from the blue Fairy.”

Regina laughed aloud. “I doubt anyone herear would believe that I need protecting from the Blue Fairy.”

Silence yet again encased the room, and Regina thought the other woman had fallen asleep, until she spoke up again. “If I start mumbling about this, ignore me, alright? There are still some echoes of Glinda in my mind, and the Blue Fairy might have brought them to the surface.”

“Echoes?”

Zelena rolled over to face her. “We were connected, down to our minds. We even shared dreams sometimes.”

Regina felt like she was falling, and the room had gone cold. “Dreams?”

“She pulled my magic out of me, and there was this… thing that we had to do, and we were in love, and we just…connected. Glinda freaked out, went on and on about the laws of magic.”

“Ah.” Regina thought back to her own dreams. The past year. A wraith and a hat. _Enjoy my shirt, because that’s all you’re getting_. The metal of the cell bars rough and biting into her back. She pulled the scratchy wool sweater around herself, realizing even more that it wasn’t the cool silk button up that she’d been captured in.


	4. Blind; Upping the Ante; Bleed

**Blind**

~*~

“That’s not going to happen.”

“Why not? You need another witch to get this portal up and running, and one was just dropped into your lap!”

“She practices Dark Magic!”

“So did Regina!”

“What are you talking about?” Zelena’s entrance into the living room cut off all conversation, everyone looking at her with vaguely guilty or grumpy defiant looks.

Tamara finally spoke up, and Zelena went to stand by her side. “We were trying to sort out a game plan before the kids geot back from school.”

“School?” she rested her head on Tamara’s shoulder.

“Downstairs,” Charming answered. “We lost the school when Regina was captured.” The Blue Fairy rolled her eyes at that and muttered “ _supposedly_ ,” though Charming ignored her.

“And?” Zelena focused on the map spread out on the table, marked up with four different Crayola Washable Markers colors, the beat up box on the floor. “What did you get?”

“We need you,” Belle cut over both Charming and Blue, much to the Fairy’s outrage. “A portal opened only from one side needs two focal points and a stabilizer, an object to focus both powers into one point. We have Blue, and Tamara says she can set up a really good stabilizer—which we’ll need for a connection between a magical land and a land that so fundamentally rejects magic. Regina is—” Blue harrumphed, but Belle spoke over her, “—not up for such heavy duty magic, and you’ve got magic that you haven’t used for more than simple tracking spells in weeks, so you’re not tired.”

They were interrupted by the door banging open, a young boy with overgrown brown hair rushed in. Zelena looked at the clock—it was only noon. “Where’s my mom?”

“Henry, the Queen…isn’t—”

“No,” Henry cut Blue off. Zelena vaguely remembered a man with Regina often named Henry. Her father? “I saw you bring her up, but none of the guards would let me out and I had to sneak out, and I wanna see my mom!”

“She’s back in the bedroom,” Tamara told him, walking around the table and crouching down in front of him. “Be gentle with her though, she went through hell.”

“Thank you,” he mumbled, nodding, and rushed out of the room without even seeming to register the fact that he’d never seen Tamara before in his life, leaving silence in his wake.

“Why do you insist on interfering, Miss Tamara?” Blue demanded when she found her voice. “I don’t recall you ever being in the Enchanted Forest; trust me, I would know.”

“She’s with me,” Zelena hissed. “And like Belle here said, you need me.”

“We also have common enemies.” Blue’s eyes slid back to Tamara. “Frankenstein— _Whale_ is with the Dark One, as you just told me. He and I have unfinished business. He stole my research.” She tacked the last bit on after looking at everyone’s questioning looks.

“And you want us to help you get it back?” Blue smirked.

“No, I wanna kill him,” Tamara said unapologetically. “Care to help?”

Blue smiled, and Zelena felt chills go down her spine. “Like you said, we apparently have common enemies.”

#

**Upping the Ante**

~*~

“This isn’t a dream.”

They both blinked, and opened their mouths to askdemand how the other knew that, and closed them again when they saw they were about to speak as one again.

“You first,” Emma motioned for Regina to go on, leaning back against the island in the kitchen. Regina sighed and walked over to the cabinets, pulling out plates and silverware as Emma moved around her to pull out god-knows-what. Regina couldn’t complain, of course—as unprofessional as Emma’s cooking techniques were, everything always came out tasting fantastic (not that she’d ever tell the blonde that).

“I apparently have a sister,” Regina told her, and Emma’s eyebrows shot up. “A shock to me, too. Mother kept all sorts of secrets. My sister says she ran into a similar situation to ours.”

“She had a weird connection to a family enemy, too?”

Regina thought about the hat and wraith again. “Something like that.”

“So what’d she do?” Emma asked as she pulled out the food she would be working with. Regina grimaced at the choices. “How’d she get rid of it?”

“The other person died.” A low whistle was her only response. “You’re taking all this—” she motioned at the setting of the dream, “rather well.”

“I’m in fairytale land with ogres and my mom Snow White. This isn’t that bad”

Regina looked at Emma, taking in her leather clad back and precise chopping motions. “You took that well, as well.”

“Haven’t really had time to adjust,” Emma countered. “Mostly it’s treating this all like one big drug-filled dream.” She threw a smile over her shoulder at Regina, and Regina found herself smiling back.

Regina pushed herself up onto the counter. “And how is ‘fairytale land?’” Guilt gnawed at her stomach.

“Not that bad, except for everyone trying to kill us.” Regina’s head shot up with that, horror written across her face. “It’s kinda devolved into a dog-eat-dog situation over there. Mulan and Aurora are the only ones who we ran into who didn’t try to kill us.”

“Kill you?” the question was barely not a squeak, and Regina prayed Emma didn’t notice.

“Yeah,” Emma brushed off her near-death as if it wasn’t a big deal, and all Regina could think about was Henry, curled up at her side and how devastated he would be if Emma died. (She wouldn’t think of herself, and how she would undoubtedly react with violent denial, wouldn’t wouldn’t wouldn’t—) “You mother is even over there. She tried to take my heart, too. A real piece of work, that woman.”

Regina felt faint. The room was blurry, and her heart was beating somewhere in between her ears. _Her mother had tried to kill Emma. Her_ mother _had tried to kill Emma._ Her _mother…_

“Regina? Regina!” Big worried green eyes stared at her, and Regina realized she was somehow on the floor. “Thank God!” Emma helped her sit up.

“Do not,” Regina growled, grabbing hold of Emma’s leather jacket and staring into her eyes, “trivialize the threat of my mother, Miss Swan. If she has tried to take your heart, then you are one of the lucky few still alive, let alone have it properly in your chest.”

“Woah, hey, I _know_ that—”

“Then act like it!” Regina practically shouted. “How…how did you even escape?” She hadn’t felt a pull on her magic, which would have been required for Emma, who had no magic herself, to fend off the attacks. Maybe it had happened while she was in the middle of a torture session.

“I don’t know,” Emma shrugged, serious and sobered by Regina’s yelling. “She was going for Snow, but I jumped in front, and she tried to pull out my heart, and then this white light thingy shot out and threw her back.”

Regina was about to snarl that of course Emma would be idiotic enough to get in front of such a thing, when the rest of the sentence caught up to her. White magic. It was a particularly rare color for magic, and where the White family had gotten its name from, though it hadn’t actually been seen in years. “You…you have magic, then. Your own, and powerful and chaotically untrained. That’s…that’s the only way you could have stopped her in such a crude way.” Angrily, she pushed the thought of wraiths and hats and _shared_ magic out of her head. “If you’ll excuse me, Miss Swan, I think someone’s trying to wake me up on my end.”

“Regina, wait, what do you—”

And then the dream ended.

#

Zelena opened the door slowly, wincing at the loud creak once the door was three-quarters of the way open. Regina lay exactly as they’d left her, on her back sleeping and snoring like a chainsaw. Lying beside her, completely undisturbed by his mother’s snoring, was her son. Henry, Zelena remembered. He was curled in a ball, tucked into his mother’s side with her hand pulled around him. In the hand not holding Regina’s was a huge stuffed seahorse squished between the two of them, scales that must have once been an eyesore neon green dulled to a bland grey. Zelena shut the door just as quietly, though with how her sister was snoring, she doubted either of the room’s occupants would hear.

“So,” came from behind her, making Zelena jump a foot in the air. She turned, facing the source of the voice. “How is she?” Tamara continued.

“Better,” Zelena told her. “She’s sleeping a lot more soundly with her son herewith her.”

“Of course,” the other woman nodded. She crossed her arms, and Zelena saw her gun hanging limply from her fingers.

“Making modifications?” Zelena asked, waving towards the gun.

“Huh? Oh,” Tamara looked down at it as if she’d forgotten what she was holding. “The Blue Fairy. Creepy as she is, she’s powerful, and helped me get everything set for Frankenstein. Any bullet from this will now go through any ward short of the ones that kept magic out of this world.”

“Oh,” Zelena deflated. “Then you don’t…need _me_ for that, then.”

“Wha—Don’t, Zee,” Tamara warned. “If you go on an angst-filled tangent about how I don’t need—”

“But you _don’t_!” Zelena burst out. “Sure, you’re my girlfriend, but I need to stay with my family, and once Frankenstein is dead you’re going back to the Land Without Color and—”

“No, I’m actually not,” Tamara cut her off. “ _I’m_ going to stay with my family, which, aside from the box of bones that used to be my grandmother before Dark Magic was through with her, is _you_ , idiot!”

Zelena sniffed, not meeting Tamara’s eyes for a beat. Two. “And Walsh,” she muttered.

Tamara gaped at her, then rolled her eyes. “Fine! Walsh, too, if you stop crying.”

Zelena threw her arms around the shorter woman. “Yay!”

“You are so—” Tamara sighed in defeat when she couldn’t come up with a word, and kissed her.

They stayed like that until they fell, the ground shaking from a concussive bang.

#

**Bleed**

~*~

Of course it was the Dark One attacking. Because why the hell _not_.

Zelena growled as she felt him carving into her wards with his dagger, and she stumbled back across the roof of the apartment building. The Blue Fairy was on the corner across from hers, fending off the animals Rumpelstiltskin was controlling: wolves and bears and other things that hadn’t made it up yet. A werewolf who had told Zelena her name was Ruby under the curse, was fighting off the animals with the Dark One’s specialenchantments.

“Please tell me you have a clear shot,” Zelena begged as her arms weakened from another blow.

“No,” Tamara told her, lying on her stomach with just her eyes and the barrel of her gun visible over the ridge of the roof. She had been on the streets earlier, fighting like hell against no less than three different animals at a time, until Charming had handed her bullets and told her to ‘get up high.’ “He keeps flickering in an out, and I haven’t even seen Frankenstein, despite everyone and their mother on the Dark One’s side being here.” It was true. On the ground right under them, their side had formed a thick barrier to fend of the mob of people that had come with the Dark One, carrying everything from guns to knives to pitchforks. Frankenstein was not among them. She fired at an animal that had been about to take Charming’s head off, and it fell with a howl of pain.

“You know, dearie,” the voice caused Zelena to jump a foot in the air, and her concentration wavered enough to let one of the big animals through to get in a blow to the bearded dwarf’s chest. She turned around to see the Dark One shimmer into being behind her, an easy and open smirk on his face. Blue had already been frozen, glaring at him. Tamara turned too, but he threw a hand out, relaxed and then curled it, jerking it into the air. Tamara followed, her gun dropping and skidding across the ground as she was held by an invisible force around her neck.

“My father,” Gold continued, turning his body back towards Zelena aside from the hand holding Tamara aloft, “always had a game he’d like to play. With travelers, you see, who didn’t know his…ah, his _reputation_. Follow the Lady, he called it. Keep your eye on the card that he told you had the lady on it—” He relaxed his hand, and Tamara fell to the ground. “—and you _always_ lost.”

He waved his hand, and his dagger, long and sharp and covered in blood, appeared in his hand. He stepped over Tamara and towards Zelena, danger raised. To Zelena’s horror, she saw Belle nimbly climbing over the fire escape. Belle’s face crumpled when she caught sight of Tamara. She had fallen so that her lower half was what the Dark One had stepped over, and her upper half was sprawled out so much her fingertips grazed her gun.

“Now,” his smile was gone, replaced by a thunderous scowl. “Where is Belle?”

Two things happened at once, and Zelena gaped as they happened in front of her. Belle stumbled fully onto the roof, shouting, “Rumple, stop!” At the same time, Tamara’s hand shot out fully to grab her gun, twisting and shooting upwards as blood poured down her shoulder. Two holes ripped open right over the Dark One’s heart, shirt and suit tearing and blood spurting out.

He looked down slowly, in disbelief, at the normally fatal wound. “How dare you,” he mumbled, before collapsing. Belle screamed. Out of nowhere, Frankenstein was beside him, crouching and pulling bandages from his pockets to repair the damage.

“Hey, doctor,” Tamara called out, pointing the gun at him. Frankenstein immediately dropped the bandages, raising his hands in surrender.

“You’d really shoot an old teacher?” he asked with faux-bravado, eyeing the barrel of the gun.

“Who stole my research on the human nervous system?” she pointed out, holding the gun higher.

He shrugged. “Fair point,” he conceded. “But no one would take the research seriously if they knew _you_ had published it, so I was doing you a favor, really—”

_Bang!_

A bullet rocketed straight towards his head, but never reached its target. Both the Dark One and Frankenstein were gone in a cloud of deep blue smoke.

Tamara’s growl of frustration, however, was drowned out by a high pitched scream.

#

“How is she?”

Zelena looked up to see Regina hobbling towards her, sitting down on the chair beside her with a wince. She shifted Tamara in her lap, leaning her head on her other shoulder so she could get a better look at her shoulder. She was exhausted, but not enough to fall into the coma-like sleep that Tamara was in when they got back into the apartment-turned-Headquarters. She figured she had enough to do a low level surface healing spells, so she’d gotten Tamara to wake up long enough for her approval, then gotten to work. She’d holed the both of them up in Regina’s room.

“Better,” Zelena responded. “Just tired.”

“It was one hell of a battle, from what I could see,” Regina allowed. “If you’d like to take a break and get some rest yourself, I think I’m healed enough to take on a simple healing spell. For family, anyway.” Regina grinned cheekily at Zelena’s shocked expression. “I tested it myself...big sister.” Zelena barely contained the full body cheer to a quiet squeal of happiness, careful of the body still resting against hers.

“I’m glad,” Zelena told her.

Regina jerked her head in the direction of the door, where a sizable commotion could still be heard. “What happened?”

“Ah...” Zelena wondered how to break this delicately.

She didn’t have too—in the next moment, Charming burst through the door carrying a small woman, pale but covered in blood and dirt, with a longbow hanging limply from her fingers. An even younger woman, in a light purple dress that for all the world looked like a collection of upside down lily petals, followed him worriedly with the Blue Fairy marching in after her.

Charming quickly laid the woman in his arms out on the bed, pushing her short black hair off her face.

“What the hell happened?” Regina demanded. “Where is Sheriff Swan?”

“Still in the Enchanted Forest,” Blue told her. “So your _help_ is still needed.”

“I didn’t say—”

“Is she going to be alright?” the lily petal girl asked.

“It’s just a broken arm, Aurora,” Charming told the woman, Aurora, soothingly, and Regina snorted.

“She’s had worse.”

“You would know, wouldn’t you?” Blue demanded, glaring at Regina.

Regina offered her a mirthless grin. “And, Princess?” she turned to Aurora. “How did you get here?”

“W-We got a portal open, to get Emma and Snow back to this world, but the Queen of Hearts found us,” Aurora started off. Zelena thought her sister’s look of shock was wholly fake, but no one else in the room commented, so she stayed silent. “She wanted to come through to get the Evil—ah, you, I guess.” She motioned to Regina. “We got into a fight, of course, and s-she went for Snow’s heart. Snow already had a broken arm by then, and couldn’t get out of the way. Emma got in the way, though, and Cora got her hand around Emma’s heart.” Everyone in the room gasped. Zelena still thought Regina looked like she’d known all of this already. “Emma blasted her away somehow, and she told me to go through the portal while she held off the Queen of Hearts. Mulan—s-someone else we were… traveling with, told me to go, as well, and Snow was already bleeding badly, so I did.” She shrugged helplessly when she came to the end of her story.

Blue was unconvinced. “That’s not—Emma using magic, that’s not possible.”

“And why not?” Regina snapped. Zelena vowed to question her later. “A child of True Love always has magic.”

“Well, _yes_ , but it would take a powerful magic user as well as someone they loved, and who loved them, to draw it out of them.  It’s not possible.” She frowned. “Although, since it isn’t something that was done with intent, like a restorative spell or a traveling spell, it could be that her heart has a natural protection around it. Snow is of a magical line, if very latent, and she had magic used on her that had True Love incorporated, so it’s very possible. It would, of course, be interesting to see what Emma could do when her magic is triggered by a love.”

_Was that a blush? And a_ smile _?_ Zelena was definitely questioning her later, the having just met be damned.  
  



	5. Catch Up; Tilt; Check-Raise

**Catch Up**

~*~

“Thank you, Princess, for meeting with us.” Mulan bowed low, and Emma hastily copied her.

Rapunzel, Emma thought, was a lot less smiles and cheer than any story would have her believe. A lot less white, too. Of course, the no smiles bit could have something to do with the fact that half her castle was destroyed by ogres.

“Stop that immediately, you cheeky—” Emma saw swirling skirts in front of her eyes, and looked up just in time to see the princess pull Mulan into a hug that literally swept her off her feet, despite Mulan having at least twenty pounds on her in bulky muscle and armor.

Mulan laughed as she was set down, running her gloved hand through now loose hair. “I thought it couldn’t hurt.”

“Well, since you didn’t just barge in here and spread your weapons across half the guest wing, I’m guessing this isn’t a social call.” Mulan shrugged guiltily, not meeting Rapunzel’s eyes. “Well, spit it out, what could you possibly need that you think you have to manipulate me for?”

The other woman shifted from foot to foot, then spat out through gritted teeth, “Your archives and half your standing army?”

Rapunzel’s eyebrows shot up. “I think this story is going to take longer than the regular meeting’s half an hour. Drinks?”

~*~

“So. You and your worst enemies’ daughter, huh?”

Regina jumped a foot in the air, and then gaped at the source of the question, the blood drained out of her face in horror.

Tamara shrugged. “Not that I haven’t made some poor choices myself in my life, but that just seems deliberately masochistic,” she informed the other woman, who finally managed to stop gaping like a fish.

“I would never—! H-How…what the _hell_ would give you the impression that I went anywhere near Sheriff Swan?!” she demanded, hissing it out so the others across the lawn wouldn’t hear. A crowd had formed around Blue and Zelena, who were practicing pushing their magic through the tube that Tamara had picked to build her stabilizer around. Even Snow White had hobbled out.

“I thought the Enchanted Forest would have at least _heard_ of me,” Tamara swooned in mock disappointment. “Ace was a hitman, spy and thief for hire with a knack for any era’s science. How do you think _I_ got the idea?” Tamara was bluffing, wholly and completely, but Zelena had pleaded with her to find out if her hunch about the Savior and Evil Queen was right. Zelena thought she was going to be subtle in finding out, of course, so she could question Regina herself—but, _details_.

Regina sighed. “What would I have to do to buy your silence?” she sounded so defeated that Tamara wondered if she _shouldn’t_ have gone with the method Zelena assumed she would.

“Woah, hey, you don’t need to _buy_ anything,” she assured Regina. “I can guess how well people knowing about this thing with you and Emma Swan would go.”

“It wasn’t a _thing_ in the first place!” Regina burst out, then winced when heads turned towards them, and quieted. “It was a onetime affair in the Sheriff Station because gods-know-why and now—”

“Now you’re in love with her,” Tamara was still somewhat in the dark, but knew Zelena’s theories were spot on. As they usually were, when they weren’t downright impossible and bat-shit crazy.

“I didn’t know for sure until days after she’d disappeared. I’d been thinking of how that damn hat could have started up, and that was the soundest theory, so I examined my own feelings for her, and…” Tamara knew better than to ask what the hell she was talking about with the hat and deflect the roll she was on.

Instead she prodded, “And that isn’t the soundest theory now?”

Regina frowned. “Not exactly. We…I didn’t realize it but we have been sharing dreams. Once I learned about Cora taking her heart, and how she had her own magic—” Another point for Zelena, “—I thought it had to be one sided, and she had to hate me irreparably after what I’d done. Blue’s various talks on magic and True Love, though I need to research them, bring it up as a possibility again. And now she’s trapped herself in a realm with _my mother_ of all people, and I have no idea—”

A whoop of joy interrupted her, and they turned to see, of all things, Blue and Zelena competing, swirls of blue and green smoke dancing around their fingers in bigger and more elaborate patterns by the second. Children, out of school and largely unharmed by the battle, cheered them on, Henry one of the loudest. Regina had told him that Zelena was his aunt, and he’d latched onto her almost as hard as he had to his mother in the past few days.

“Well,” Tamara turned back to Regina, wincing at the thought of Zelena’s high pitched screeching when she’d fiound out Tamara had questioned her sister without her. “Why don’t you get some rest, and if she’s there in your dreams, you too can talk. Rip her a new one about needless endangerment of her sorry ass.”

Regina looked entirely too enthusiastic about ripping someone a new one, but nodded, going inside to the apartment Charming and Zelena had managed to clean out for her, since the bed she was in was now occupied.

#

**Tilt**

~*~

“How dare you!”

“Woah, wait, _hey—_ ”

“You tell me my mother almost took your heart, but you don’t tell me you came this close to coming through and didon’t because—out of some misguided sense of _loyalty_ to people you met only weeks ago?!”

Emma ducked under the fist aimed at her head. “It was a split second decision, and I don’t think the woman who’s been dream-avoiding me gets to call out anyone’s bullshit!” That got Regina to stop. “Look, I’m sorry if Henry was worried by that, but it’s honestly _fine_. I’m fine, over here, and am still working on a way to get back.”

Regina coughed, shifting from foot the foot, when she mentioned Henry. “I, uh, I may not have mentioned these dreams to him. Or anyone, for that matter.”

“What! Why?” More guilty looks aimed at her shoes. “Regina, please. I told you a lot of fucked up shit about my childhood in here, hell, we even managed to talk about the apple turnover without fighting too much—” They both grimaced, remembering the decibel of the shouting, though, “what is it?”

“Our dreams…these _types_ of shared dreams…would be an indicator of our past—of our _intimate_ —”

“Fucking?” Emma guessed.

“ ‘Fucking’ is as good a word as any, I suppose,” Regina grinned, then sighed. “Two magic users who have—who care for one another would be able to share these if they had connected before.”

 _You care about me_? Emma almost said, but Regina still wasn’t meeting her eyes. “We _connected_ lots of times, then, so these dreams must be really strong.”

That did it. Regina snorted, glaring at her with her lips twitching into a smile. “Not like that, idiot, connected via magic.”

“Jefferson’s hat,” Emma filled in.

“Precisely. It appears, in my desperation, I drew out your magic, and we connected to start the hat.”

“Sweet,” Emma grinned. She walked over to Regina and held her arms out on either side of her in a ghost of a hug. “Is this okay?” When Regina nodded, Emma pulled her into a tight hug. “I’m really glad no one else fell through with me and Mary Margaret. It’s kind of shit over here.”

“It’s not much better here,” Regina mumbled.

“What?” Emma demanded, pulling back enough to look at Regina’s face.

“…Did I mention that Gold has started a war because of a discrepancy with not being able to cross the town linke that he thinks I caused?”

Emma gaped at her, before barking out a laugh. “Things are shit everywhere, then.”

“Except here,” Regina pointed out.

“Yeah,” Emma breathed out, leaning down and looking at Regina’s lips. “Except here.” Then, she kissed her.

#

**Check-Raise**

~*~

Emma jerked awake, then groaned. _Why_ , she thought. _Why one of the one times she actively really wanted to stay in-dream with Regina, did they have to wake themseves up?_ She rolled over onto her stomach, hoping she could just drop back into the dream, knowing it was useless. She had just gotten Regina’s pants off too.

She hoped this was the worst point in her day.

~*~

“You’ve been my best friend since we were little, Hood—did you really think hiding up a tree would prevent me from finding you?” Rapunzel smiled up at the tops of the trees, and indistinguishable wall of green except to a select few.

“Not you,” a disembodied voice called out. Something—somewhat bigger than a dog but much smaller than a horse—dropped out of those very tops of the trees, landing with a thud and feet-over-cap until the cap fell off and the head under it came to a stop resting by her feet. A big smile beamed up at her from under what Rapunzel had always thought was the prettiest pair of brown eyes she’d ever seen. Robyn Hood, newly-pardoned thief and ally to the kingdom, blew a lock of leaf-laden hair off of her rich brown face and continued, “just my enemies. You know how it is—you take just enough to be a mild annoyance to some kings with them never actually giving a damn, but then a war starts up and suddenly you’re on everyone’s hit list!”

Rapunzel snorted, helping Hood to her feet. “Of course you’ve gotten yourself in trouble already. You’re lucky people didn’t revolt when you were pardoned under my rule!”

“Old trouble,” Hood pointed out, grabbing Rapunzel’s shoulders and looking her dead in the eye. “You know i would never break a promise to you, right? Especially not as important as this one. No thieving—only legitimate work since I’ve been courting Marian.”

Pulling out of Hood’s hold, Rapunzel asked, “How is Marian?”

Hood shrugged, grinning. “Good, of course. These have been some of the best months of our life.” The smile melted into a frown, then. “Sad, though, at dawn most times, when she thinks I’m still asleep. Now that we’ve all woken up out of that curse daze, her memories of her husband’s death are coming back hard.” She started walking in the direction of her home, and Rapunzel followed her.

Though Rapunzel had never met him despite hearing stories, the ‘original’ Hood—Ellis, as she’d later learned his name to be. The name that would come to be feared by nobles had been taken from her very best friend at the time, not that little Rapunzel had connected the dots between the Hood of their childhood and her friend. And why would she? Hood was supposed to be a fully grown man descended from the White kingdom, not the brawn of a strategically brainy young girl in the village just up the river from Rapunzel’s castle. The tales of Hood had died down when Ellis had married Marian, the perfect young girl to his seasoned soldier. It was when Robyn was finally old enough to take her rightful title thatwhen things had gotten bad. There were heaps more descriptions of Ellis as Hood than Robyn, and finally the royalty of the area had had enough. He was hunted down and slaughtered in front of his house, not a week after Roland was born.

“But,” Hood continued. “You would come visit the cottage, instead of my outpost if that’s what you really wanted to know. Now what is it?”

Rapunzel sighed. “The curse daze. You know it comes from the curse cast by the Evil Queen?” Hood nodded. “So, there is a woman here from there—I’m not too sure on the details myself—and she needs to get back there.”

“Get _back_? Why? Even in it’s horrible shape, isn’t the Forest her home?”

“Not exactly. And there are people under the curse that she needs to get back to so she can protect them.”

“From the Evil Queen?”

Rapunzel winced. “Not exactly.”

Hood snorted.

“ _Anyway_ , I found where they would need to go through. Lake Nostos, despite that a portal was thereir just days ago, is the only place with natural magic strong enough to keep a portal going long enough for her to get through safely. I need you and the Merry Men to help protect her journey there, and her crossing itself.”

Hood’s eyebrows shot up. “Protect? What could she possibly have gotten into that she would need protecting more than the rest of us? And if I help, what happens with Roland and Marian? More than being my family, they are under my protection.”

Rapunzel sighed. “This explanation will take a while. Can I come in for a drink?”

#

_Dear Rumple,_

_I hope this letter finds you in good health—you’ll need it, I hear. You made my daughter quite powerful, my spies have told me, but this town line business is punishment enough for that, don’t you think? My daughter, as much as her heart made her incredibly foolish, always was a clever girl. Of course, I need her now, so I propose a trade: I break the town line for you, and you give me my daughter. Unharmed. The side of Good that is left in the Enchanted Forest is planning to help open the portal those on your side are planning_ _. Use that to get me through, and have my daughter with you. Considering all you did just to be in the same realm as your son, you can understand my concern?_

_Please respond promptly,_

_Cora_

_~*~_

_My dear Cora,_

_You, as always, are clever and give me solutions to problems I thought impossible to untangle. I agree wholeheartedly to your terms. Of course your daughter will be given over unharmed._

_Thank you my darling,_

_Rumpelstiltskin_


	6. Wildcard

**Wildcard**

~*~

Robyn Hood wondered, not for the first time today, how Rapunzel had talked her into this. It wasn’t as if this was something she was _needed_ for, in particular, and if they just stayed out of the way it was likely this battle would have no effect on them. Of course this other warrior, Mulan, she’d said her name was, had managed to sweet talk her in under half an hour into going along with this—this complete _insanity_.

“On your left!” Marian shouted with something like glee, and Robyn muttered a curse as she swung around to barely avoid an arrow that would have gone straight through her side. Marian, by all rights, should be at home, but had insisting on coming along to prevent her from doing anything stupid. It was completely pointless of course—any stupid decisions would have to wait until she did not have an insane witch trying to kill them all to get to her daughter a realm away. Roland was with the Merry Men, hopefully two kingdoms away by now, being fully distracted from the fact that both his mothers were missing.

Robyn glanced over her shoulder at Mulan’s companion, Emma Swan, who was trying to pull open a portal before the irate witch attempting to incinerate them all got through. For all their sakes, she wished the other woman would hurry up.

 

There weren’t a lot of things that scared Tamara; the list could be crammed in sloppy penmanship onto the palm of her hand. Her entire experience with Storybrooke, from breaking the wards to the current problem, would take up a solid half of the space on her hand.

“Stay still!”

“I _am_!” She glared at the Blue Fairy in disbelief. The woman had been squirming from the time they’d set up the stabilizer, and it had only gotten worse once the Dark One had— _yet again_ —attacked. Zelena she’d been able to connect pretty quickly, and she was off fighting the Dark One with her sister. Despite being exhausted, Regina managed to hold her own, and magic flowed between the two of them like they’d known each other their whole lives. It would have been awe-inspiring if she’d had time to watch.

“Ow!” the Fairy shouted, but with a splutter, the combination of her s and Zelena’s magic started up the stabilizer, and Tamara yanked it from her hands.

She clicked the last parts into place, and looked back up at the other woman. “I got this,” she told her while taking aim with the machine, carefully blocking out the screams of battle. “Go.”

 

Good news: Swan had managed to open the portal. Bad news: Cora was through their defenses, and was going after Swan herself, leaving her undead to take care of everyone else.

A swing of an arm snatched off her cap and separating the red feather from the rest, before coming detached itself, and Robyn swung her foot in a roundhouse kick at the undead’s throat. Mulan was managing to take care of herself, holding them off by working her sword into the ground and pulling, letting the vibrations of the near-snapping of unbreakable metal pierce the undead’s eardrums. It wouldn’t be effective for much longer, judging by the way the space they gave around her was closing, but so far it was enough.

Swan was fighting the witch ( _Cora_ , she thought, _was the name mentioned_ ) and losing badly. Occasionally, a wave of near impossibly powerful magic would come off of her, but for the most part, Cora was advancing quickly. Robyn couldn’t actually tell what Cora was saying to have Swan look so enraged, but whatever it was, she said it with a lazy confident smirk.

Robyn ducked and backed away from the undead some more, and from this angle, she could see through the portal. A woman that looked the same age as her was holding a huge metal contraption up by her shoulders, and the portal on her side seemed to be connected to it. Behind her, a war was raging in the forest that looked just as deadly as the one here in the lakebed. She took out an arrow, dipped in silver and gold and one that never missed, and took aim through it.

 _I hope whoever is getting Swan to come back is worth this_.

 

After the portal was open, things happened very quickly. Regina suddenly collapsed as a cry of pain was heard through the portal. Tamara saw Zelena falter and scream, letting the Dark One through. With only one glance, he made a beeline for Tamara, hands outstretched for the stabilizer. Only moments before he reached her, thin green magic bands combined with one thick and purple wrapped around him. Behind Tamara, she felt someone thud to the ground behind her, letting out a curse and a groan of pain. The Dark One was thrown through the portal by the magic, and Tamara rolled away on instinct a split second before the portal started collapsing.

She looked up and saw glimpses through the bright light of powerful magic caving in on itself. The Dark One, the tip of a gold arrow protruding out of his back. On the other end of the arrow, a woman in a dark frilly dress impaled. The two of them pushing off of each other and fighting. The two of them collapsing. A woman, dark skin tinted gold and glittering brown eyes shining in relief, winking at her with a bow in her hands.

And then, nothing.


	7. Catch Perfect

**Catch Perfect**

~*~

Rapunzel’s castle gleamed in the light, even the repairs themselves seeming built in and beautiful on this day. People from this kingdom and the next and the next had gathered in, spilling over cracks and crumbled walls to see one of the people instrumental in killing off the Dark One and the Queen of Hearts.

The person in question was bowed on one knee at the Queen’s feet, light bouncing off the metal pieces of her new armor.

“And lastly, do you, Robyn Hood of Locksley, swear to uphold the law set out by your Queen, in every aspect?”  Rapunzel glanced down after asking, seeing Hood smirk and her eyes flicker toward her new wife and son standing at the head of the crowd. Marian was crying outright, with a smile stretched in between tear tracks so wide it looked like it hurt. Roland had let go of his mother’s cloak for once, doing an odd little dance to restrain himself from clapping and yelling, showing off his sole missing tooth with his smile wider than his mother’s.

“I do,” Hood swore.

“Then rise, my Knight, and face your people.” She did, and the cheers were so deafening that Rapunzel thought the castle would shake down completely to the ground around them.

#

Storybrooke was calm, for once. It was early morning, the weak sunlight highlighting the stillness and aftermath of the destruction done, everyone sleeping off the earlier battle against—

Well, almost everyone.

“I’m...fairly—ah!—certain this would—” A moan reverberated throughout the master bedroom of the Mayoral Mansion, muffled against one of the many pillows piled on the bed. “—qualify as the—oh, oh, _oh_ —strenuous activity I was specifically warned against— _ohgodEmma_!” Regina curled around the blonde head bobbing between her legs, hips jerking as she came yet again.

Emma peppered kisses on the other woman’s stomach, leaning up to suck hard on a bruise on the skin just under her breast. “How?” she demanded. “I made sure you weren’t doing any work, and there’s definitely enough support for you back.” She shifted the pillows hastily shoved under Regina for emphasis.

Regina rolled her eyes. “I don’t think that’s what was meant.”

Before either of them could say anymore, two separate ringtones rang out. Emma launched herself off the bed and grabbed the two phones, tossing one at Regina.

“Mills.”

“Hey, Mary Margaret.”

“ _What?_ ”

“Aw, come one, can’t this wait?” Emma jerked the phone away from her ear as Snow White yelled at her, and Regina rolled her eyes at her while listening to the much calmer tones from her own phone.

Emma sighed, hanging up and staring mournfully at her spot on the bed. “The attack at the edge of town?” Regina asked as she hung up her own phone.

“Yeah,” Emma told her, getting onto her stomach and pulling her jeans from under the bed. “Why? Why couldn’t the town stay quiet for _one day_.”

“It was like this in the Enchanted Forest, if it makes you feel any better.” Regina caught the bra tossed up from the floor.

“It doesn’t actually.” Emma’s head followed the bra, the woman attached to it straddling Regina and kissing her.

“We’re supposed to be going,” Regina mumbled, regretfully pulling away.

“Fine, fine, fine,” Emma grumbled, getting off her and the bed altogether. She held out a hand to help Regina do the same, bowing playfully. “Your Majesty. Let’s go, your carriage awaits.”

<<<<END>>>>


End file.
